Locating knowledge in Australian cities: The Knowledge City Index

In the digital era, there is a tendency to consider knowledge and its creation to be increasingly untethered from place. No longer limited by linguistic, cultural and spatial barriers, knowledge and its production can be acquired and shared with ease on a global scale. In this chapter, however, we contend that knowledge and its role in the contemporary economy, while impacted by digitalisation, nonetheless remains fundamentally situated within geographic contexts. We argue that cities and regions play a prime role in generating knowledge and facilitating and nurturing knowledge work. In line with this argument, we present the Knowledge City Index for 25 Australian cities to showcase the connections and tensions between the capacity of knowledge situated within regions of Australia and the knowledge economy of urban localities. We find that for some localities the work-related technological transitions will impact favourably on local residents, ensuring the skills and creativity of workers is valued and harnessed by knowledge-intensive activities. For other localities, however, the skills and associated work practices appear increasingly ill-suited to the knowledge economy. These transitions are played out differently within Australian cities. Understanding and exploring this context of knowledge-creation and the implications that stem from its geography is crucial. Findings from this investigation will provide insight into the changing nature of work practices and the cities and regions that are likely to be most and least susceptible to the uneven knowledge-derived social and economic transitions currently underway.